White Wraith
by xXFangirlOnFireXx
Summary: She'd never experienced snow this deathly, this still, in her life. Then again, it had also been years since she'd experienced him in her life. / One-shot, ROTBTD.


**White Wraith**

When she'd heard the first warnings for the "blizzard," she thought of massive amounts of snow tumbling from the gray void that the sky had become, while winds pushed her over again and again until she was forced to take cover somewhere and let the storm rage. But there was no blizzard.

No blizzard, but snow indeed.

What shocked her the most was how softly and how quietly the flakes fell. Everything was gentle. Everything was calm. She felt as though something would break if she even let her fingers brush over the ground. In turn, she winced every time she took another step, leaving a trail of footprints behind her.

But she had to keep going. She had to get back to the tower. The others were waiting for news, and she'd have to break it to them that she never found him. The only evidence that he was still alive was the snow falling over her right now.

She winced again.

Years ago when it snowed, there was always a playful, blustery wind. It carried laughter, joy, _fun,_ and a childlike innocence, and the snow never bothered anyone. Even as a spirit of spring she looked forward to winter, waiting for when the white would come back to greet her year after year. But now? Hardly any wind at all. It was a deathly stillness. Flakes did not dance; they fell in straight, uniform, slightly diagonal paths. And the cold cut into her feet like it never had before.

It was like the last time she'd seen him happy, versus the last time she'd seen him.

He used to be all about fun. By Manny, he was the _Guardian of Fun._ He used to start snowball fights just for the sake of having fun. He'd make beautiful frost designs and give them to her just to see the smile on her face. And above all, he was always trying to make light of things. But then the last time she'd seen him…he'd been so different.

He'd been hollow.

Back straight, arms at his side with one hand tightly gripping his staff, sunken face, yellow eyes, black hair, black outfit, empty smirk, and the promise that he'd come back. But not like he used to be. He'd be back, all right—he'd be back for blood. He warned of a blizzard, and then he'd gone and vanished without a trace.

She stumbled again, the fourth time that hour.

The snow was getting increasingly heavy on the ground, and she was becoming increasingly tired. It had been over thirty-six hours since she last slept, and eighteen since she last ate, and eight since she'd last felt even a bit warm. She'd gone out looking for him. She'd told the others she would be back, she wouldn't go far.

She didn't even recognize the meadow she was in.

Was she even going in the right direction?

_Just a little bit further, just a little bit further._ She'd been repeating that mantra for…what, two hours now? She couldn't think straight. Different colors blurred her vision. She couldn't feel her feet anymore. She could feel her heartbeat slamming against her forehead.

Wind chimes. She heard wind chimes. One memory, hundreds of years ago, back when she was practically a newborn back in the kingdom, before she was kidnapped. It'd been snowing. Her mother told her all about the mythical being of Jack Frost, and how he brought the snow, and how you hardly ever heard wind chimes besides when it was snowing, gently like this.

In a bitter, biting silence.

Except there was no more silence. There was groaning, now. She looked around, alarmed, for the source of the groaning, only to find that it was herself, and the swift turn of her head sent pain flaring through her forehead. Colors exploded like fireworks in her line of sight, and she finally stumbled the fifth and final time. Her legs gave out. She cried out sharply as her knees hit the snow, and then her hands, and the rest of her body finally collapsed on her.

_I'm going to…I'm going to make it…I just…have…to…get up…_

But she couldn't even tell her limbs to move, to get her up and out of the snow before she froze to death. She didn't even know where she _was._

_I'm…going…to die here…_

The snow would pile and pile and pile while she would fall unconscious. She'd suffocate, and she'd die, and there would be no way around it.

It must have been only a few minutes—maybe ten—but to her it felt like an eternity later when she felt the presence of someone standing over her. Even with fluttery eyelids, fading in and out of consciousness, she could make out a pair of feet crunching the snow. They'd been running a few seconds earlier, hadn't they? They'd been running to her.

Her last conscious thought was that there was a pair of arms around her.

…

"Is she finally waking up?"

"I think so. Go get the soup—the poor lass is probably starvin'."

A massive headache was not something great to wake up to, but the fireplace and the softness of the couch and the warmth of the blankets draped over her made up for it. She blinked, several times, until everything came into view. She was back in the tower. Merida was watching her closely, and Hiccup was walking up to the table in front of her with a bowl of soup. And then came Toothless, bounding up to her. He nudged her with his snout, a look of concern in his bright green eyes.

"I-I'm a-a-alive."

"And you're lucky you are. You were pretty pale when we finally found you," Hiccup set, setting the soup down on the table and sitting next to Merida.

"W-Where'd you find me?" Rapunzel asked curiously, hesitantly pushing herself into a sitting position. When she found she was able to sit up with no problem, she grabbed the soup from the table.

"At the base of the tower. We'd gone out looking for you, and we couldn't find you, and so we came back, and there you were," Hiccup explained. "You looked dead. Merida practically had a heart attack."

Rapunzel's brow furrowed. The base of the tower? That couldn't be right…she was in that meadow. Someone out there found her, didn't they? Had she been wrong in even her location? She must have been…she couldn't think straight at that time, after all.

"Punzie? You look confused. You all right?" Merida asked, eyebrows knitting together in concern.

"Y-Yeah, I'm fine," Rapunzel replied absently. "I never found Jack…"

"You didn't have to go lookin' in the first place. Remember? He said he'd find us. Looked like a pretty stern promise, to me. What with him bein' Pitch's little pet now. We need all the time before he comes back to prepare," Merida said softly. "Now, eat your soup. Get more sleep. You still look like you've seen a ghost."

Merida got up and went upstairs at that moment. Hiccup shook his head, gave Rapunzel a final sympathetic look, and followed Merida, Toothless keeping close behind. That left Merida alone, with the shut window, in the main room of the tower. Nothing but her, the soup, the crackling fireplace, and her thoughts.

So it hadn't been Merida or Hiccup to rescue her.

She could've sworn she was nowhere near the tower when she collapsed. She'd been in a meadow. A snow-covered, vast meadow, that had seemed to spread out in all directions, yet she was supposed to believe she _had_ made it home? That she'd been at the very base of the tower when they finally found her, frozen from head-to-toe and on death's door?

Merida's comment rang out in her head.

_"You still look like you've seen a ghost."_

Maybe she had. The ghost of someone's former self, heart vulnerable in the time it took him to lift her up, get her back to the tower as fast as possible, and leave her like she'd made it there herself, before he could snap back into the darkness and hurt her like he had before.

Maybe she had seen a ghost after all.


End file.
